Abstract:

According to Maslow′s Need Hierarchy Theory, safety is the second most significant need for human beings,only next to physiological need. Since tourism is a thriving industry worldwide and increasing people are involved in travelling, security has become one of the most important factors for tourists. Tourism Risk Perception is tourists’ perception of negative consequences that may occur before and during their travels. Based on the literature review, risk perception has developed into an important part in tourism study nowadays, and has a farreaching influence on tourism decisionmaking process. Through openended questionnaires’ research, this paper builds a scale of tourists’ risk perception composed of 18 indicators, including geological disasters, meteorological disasters, crime, disease, traffic accidents and so on, which provides basis and reference for research in other natural sightseeing. Taken Jiuzhaigou as an example, through empirical analysis, this paper gets some conclusions as follows. (1) Based on factorial analysis, the risks tourists percept can be divided into three main dimensions: dysfunction, crisis event and cultural conflict. Among them, dysfunction is the most at risk, crisis event comes next, while cultural conflict is least. (2) The overall risk perception of tourists is inconspicuous. And the risks perceived during the tour are less than which were imagined before the travel. This indicates that travelling in Jiuzhaigou is safer than peoples’ imagination.  The crisis events such as earthquakes are not the main risks which tourists worried about.(3) The parameter test analysis shows that: dysfunction risk has a significant difference among tourists who have travelled to Jiuzhaigou for different times, and who differ in age and education level. Cultural conflict risk shows a significant difference among tourists who have different occupation, education level and income level. And crisis event risk has no difference among different groups of tourists. The differences among different groups of tourists are mainly reflected in “waste of money”, “lost or losing companion” and "language barriers". Besides, gender, region, whether or not experienced disasters, whether or not bought insurance, whether or not carried drugs and other factors have no significant effects on the differences among various types of risk perceptions. Based on these findings, some recommendations are raised to tourism marketers for promoting the tourism products. The tourists' risk perception research in this study provides a reference to improve tourism safety theory and has an important significance on the planning and management of tourist destination. This scale of tourists’ risk perception has its own characteristics in natural disasters and cultural conflicts dimensions. And it provides a preliminary framework for the research on tourism risk perception in natural sightseeing, such as Jiuzhaigou. The adaptability of the scale of tourists’ risk perception in holiday and cultural tourist destinations could be researched further in the future.